Rainy Mood
by hilzanne
Summary: After the escape of Mutagen Man, Donatello cannot ease his troubled thoughts. And he isn't alone in his struggles to find peace of mind.
1. Chapter 1

**This is my second TMNT fanfic, and I always appreciate your reviews! However, before you read this, I have a suggestion that will greatly enhance the story. To give you a feeling of what Donatello is hearing, pull up two extra Internet tabs. On one, go to Rainy Mood dot com. On the other, go to this video on You Tube: watch?v=n17Qhj4Gdzg  
I've fallen in love with reading while listening to these two tabs. It's romantic, soft, beautiful, and not distracting. I really hope you enjoy and take my advice to listen to the music and the rain while reading! And there WILL be more chapters to this story!**

Donatello laid his head across his arms on the workbench. His mind was heavy; clouded thoughts swirled within him. It was late. Beakers, test tubes and spreadsheets lay scattered over the bench. The turtle sighed as the weight of his thoughts seemed to crush his body under their gravity. Mutagen Man. Kirby O'Neil. Foot Clan robots. April's _boyfriend._ Even in his mind he said the word with utter disgust. The thought repulsed him.

Donnie tilted his head to glance at the T-phone across the work table. He willed it to ring. But it remained silent. He sat up with another sigh and began shuffling the papers into a neat pile. He placed the glass tubes back on their racks. He drained the beakers of their chemicals, carefully disposing of them in the lab's sink. No progress on a retro-mutagen. Again.

Rain drizzled on the streets, creating a gentle patter in the sewers below as the falloff ran into storm drains. Gentle rolls of thunder rumbled miles away. Donnie's T-pod was turned to a low volume so it would not drown out the sounds of the rain. The songs were soft and wispy, almost like they did not quite belong in such a harsh sewer, in such a harsh city, in such a harsh world. Though the music was mind-numbing, the turtle could not quiet the tempest in his mind. He found it difficult cope with the loss of Timothy, now Mutagen Man, but he knew he could come to grips with it in time. There was confidence that he could reclaim Timothy's mind once again with time and experiments. But it was the loss of April's trust that ached like broken hands. Constant, agonizing, raw.

Donatello took the clean beakers back to the bench, placing them upside-down to dry. He looked across the table at the hole in the brick wall, now boarded in a rudimentary fashion. Was a retro-mutagen even possible? Had he and his brothers made irreversible mistakes? The notion sickened him. Donnie sat back down at the bench and gathered his spreadsheets in his oversized hands. He thumbed through them, hoping a flash of inspiration and clarity would come. Each paper stared back at the turtle, mockingly empty of value. Red X's and scrawled captions marred each page. "No visible result." "Condition worsened." "Failure."

Pulses of pain shot through his head. He always ended up with a migraine when he stayed up late, especially after staring at charts and books for hours on end. The turtle tossed the papers aside and stretched his aching back. He sauntered over to his box of medicine only to find his bottle of Ibuprofen empty, but he knew there was another in the kitchen.

Donnie slid the large metal door of his lab open as quietly as he could, noticing a lifeless Michelangelo on the couch of the lair. The dim light of the TV, now only showing color bars, illuminated the turtle's path to the kitchen. Mikey's limbs were sprawled like a rag doll and his mouth lay wide open. Donatello would have mistaken him for a corpse if he had not made the occasional gurgling snore. The lanky turtle opened a medicine cabinet and dumped three red pills into his hand. He dry-swallowed them on the way back to his room, watching Mikey's plastron rise and fall slightly.

As he slid the door closed with a metallic clank, a veil of sleepiness came over him. The drizzle outside had turned into a deluge, the heavy droplets smacking the asphalt above. Donatello flicked the light switch, leaving only a soft floor lamp near his bed to illuminate the space. He grabbed a book from the workbench before stepping towards bunk. His leather belt and sash fell to the floor with a _clink_ and he climbed between his silky plum-colored sheets. Donnie was quite sensuous; he enjoyed having soft sheets and listening to relaxing music. It helped to combat the struggle in his mind lately.

As the downpour continued the batter the streets, Donnie sat up in his bed, skimming over a book about biochemistry. His eyelids could not hold out for long, though. Eventually, the turtle succumbed to his exhaustion and fell asleep propped up with the text in his lap, heavy head lolled to one side.


	2. Chapter 2

**Rainy Mood, Chapter 2. Reviews always welcome! Much more to come on this story.**

April dropped her head onto her open trigonometry book. _Math is the bane of my existence, _she thought to herself. A jumbled mess of numbers, Greek letters and symbols churned in her mind as she groaned into her book. But more than just her homework clouded her thoughts like a dense fog.

One full week. That was how long it had been since she last saw the creature that had once been her father. The last time she had spoken to her four closest friends. The last time she had looked into the russet-colored eyes she knew so well.

She took a deep breath and shoved her chair away from her desk. She shut her math book with a soft _thump_ and slid it back into her book bag. Raindrops rolled down her window, leaving tiny trails of clean glass in their wake. She watched them streak slowly to settle on the window sill, mesmerized for a few moments. Rainy evenings like this made her think of leaving her window open on warm summer nights when she was young. The soft sound of the rain had always lulled her to sleep, soothing and pleasant.

She felt compelled to sit by the window and just listen to the downpour. Her hand rested on the cool glass. It was late enough that no cars passed by, and the only sound was that of fat droplets landing heavily on the pavement below. Entranced by the sound as she stared out her window, a moving shadow caught April's eye. She quickly tried to focus on it in the dark only to discover it was a stray cat knocking over a trash can. Her heart rate slowed back to normal when she realized it was not a turtle. Trance now broken, she left the window and padded over to her plush bed. She removed her cozy sweatshirt and slid out of her slippers before wriggling into her sheets.

April pulled her hair out of its ponytail. It had been so tight that her head ached. She reached for the composition notebook on her bedside table and a pen from its drawer. Feeling around for a pen as she flipped through the pages of the notebook, April's hand found a domed object with a rough patterned texture. Her body froze when she recognized it as her T-phone. She felt a weight hit her chest as she remained motionless. Her eyes squeezed shut to stop the rising flood of memories. Burning hot tears balanced on the verge of spilling over onto her freckled cheeks. _Why, _she thought. _Why does everything have to remind me of them?_

She remembered back to English class that day. A boy in an orange polo had been cracking jokes the entire period. In gym, two boys had had a showdown in dodge ball, with the red team eventually defeating the blue. Afterwards, the two boys walked together to the locker room saying, "No hard feelings." During last period advanced chemistry, a quiet yet brilliant boy had asked to be her lab partner. After class, she watched him pick up his purple backpack and leave.

At that final memory, April threw her head back to stare at the ceiling, and to let gravity do the work. Tears flowed from the corners of her azure eyes silently as she gripped her notebook tightly to her chest. She wanted nothing more than to cry out and let her tears run their course, but she stifled every noise, save for the occasional sniffle. Her breaths came in short bursts. She sat there clutching the notes for a few moments, trying to erase the thoughts from her mind. Just as she started to calm down, she wiped the moisture off her face and flipped a few more pages in her notebook. There was something stuck between the sheets. She turned to it to find a photo. April sat on a swing, smiling and laughing while a tall turtle pushed her, flashing a gap-toothed grin. Tears sprang anew and she launched the notebook across the room. It hit the wall and crumpled to the ground. This time, she could not hold back.

April leaned her head into her hands and her body convulsed with sobs. She was not crying just because she missed the four best friends she had ever had, or just because of her father's mutation. She cried when she remembered how much she deeply regretted screaming at the turtles, at Donnie, to stay away from her. She hated that she had lied to her father to get him to go up to the roof where he had been mutated. But the one single moment that caused her the most pain was remembering when Donatello had taken April into his arms when her father had been kidnapped. He had looked straight into her eyes with resolve and confidence, promising her he would get her father back to her safely.

And he had. Donnie had never lied to April. So when she turned her back on him, had seen the sorrow in his eyes, had screamed at him to stay away from her forever, she realized that she had shattered the trust between them. By running away, she had spit in his face. Called him unworthy. Never intelligent enough to bring her father back. In that moment where blue eyes locked onto brown, she had had full and complete trust in him. And then she threw it all away.

April cried out as flashes of lightning filled her room. She now realized how completely wrong she had been to run. She ran away from her best friends, friends who loved her. And she had run away from the only person she knew had the capability to create a retro-mutagen and return her father once again.

"Donatello," she choked. "I am so sorry…"

Raindrops fell heavily on the streets. Thunder rolled in the distance. Lightning illuminated her bedroom for instants at a time. Still sobbing, she cocooned herself in the covers of her bed until her crying had exhausted her completely and she fell into dreamless sleep.


End file.
